A very laudable effort is initiated by 'Student Workers Against Tobacco' today on Senapati Bapat Marg, just a couple of hundred feet from where I stay. I as watching them painting gory pictures of the ill effects of smoking.
I am myself an almost reformed smoker. After my heart caved in last year, I was forced to quit my habit of smoking 3 packs a day for 45 years. I did it out of fear of death and not remorse. But after a couple of months, when I got over the fear of death, I started smoking again in a few months-but reduced the quantity.
But this is not my story. It is about the students who were participating as a team. Of course they had sponsored tee-shirts displaying the name of the Sponsors . They were quiet a bunch- exuberant , enthusiastic and full of zeal. A media van also came and shot them, although, standing on the opposite footpath on my side of the pavement, I could not read the channel's name.
Nowadays you get sponsors galore for any noble cause. Companies are hungry and thirsty for such noble publicity. A truly laudable effort by the these young men and Kudos for the sponsors.
The ironical part of all this is that there were many among these students including girls , who were not averse to smoking, as I saw quite a few of them with cigarettes in their hands, going about their work nonchalantly . Even the media persons when shooting the students and their drawn pictures had cigarettes in their hands.
I don't hold a brief for any cigarette company as I have experienced the ill effects of smoking first hand but what can a by-stander surmise from the aforesaid incidence-Split Personalities, Dual Standards or Pseudo- ism on part of the participants or plain ignorance
I am myself an almost reformed smoker. After my heart caved in last year, I was forced to quit my habit of smoking 3 packs a day for 45 years. I did it out of fear of death and not remorse. But after a couple of months, when I got over the fear of death, I started smoking again in a few months-but reduced the quantity.
But this is not my story. It is about the students who were participating as a team. Of course they had sponsored tee-shirts displaying the name of the Sponsors . They were quiet a bunch- exuberant , enthusiastic and full of zeal. A media van also came and shot them, although, standing on the opposite footpath on my side of the pavement, I could not read the channel's name.
Nowadays you get sponsors galore for any noble cause. Companies are hungry and thirsty for such noble publicity. A truly laudable effort by the these young men and Kudos for the sponsors.
The ironical part of all this is that there were many among these students including girls , who were not averse to smoking, as I saw quite a few of them with cigarettes in their hands, going about their work nonchalantly . Even the media persons when shooting the students and their drawn pictures had cigarettes in their hands.
I don't hold a brief for any cigarette company as I have experienced the ill effects of smoking first hand but what can a by-stander surmise from the aforesaid incidence-Split Personalities, Dual Standards or Pseudo- ism on part of the participants or plain ignorance
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